Open Floor

Lets open the floor. So far its been pretty one sided. If there is a particular question on a story, or if you would like more details on anything, just let me know. That comment button isn't just there for looks. Lets open things up and get the ball moving. And don't forget to tell your friends to stop by and read.

Joke of the Day 2

I've decided that the employees here at a House of a Thousand Pizzas are not playing a joke on me. They are actually that lazy. This is very depressing. I thought they were just acting. So to cheer myself up I think I will start putting a few pizza jokes on the page to spice things up. I know that these people getting paid to (not) do this job is a joke in itself. But hey, why not.


A college pizza delivery boy arrived at the house of Larry Johnson. He delivered the pizza to his trailer. After giving it to him, Larry asked: "What is the usual tip?"

"Well," replied the youth, "this is my first trip here, but the other guys say if I get a quarter out of you, I'll be doing great." "Is that so?" snorted Larry. "Well, just to show them how wrong they are, here's five dollars."

"Thanks," replied the youth, "I'll put this in my school fund."

"What are you studying in school?" asked Larry.

The lad smiled and said: "Applied psychology."

Tastless Joke of the Day

What do a gynecologist and a pizza delivery boy have in common? They can both smell it but can't eat it.

Paid to Work

My last post reminded me about something very interesting. We here at House of a Thousand Pizzas make pizzas for consumption by consumers. To make this happen we pay employees to work. Now this is a very complicated process. A Person comes in, they work, and we pay them for it. Complicated right?
I have upwards of 50 applications coming into my store a week. Now half of these people can't pass the stupid little test that asks questions like-Do you steal money? Even after deleting the obvious idiots, that is still a large applicant pool. Its no secret either. We get several phone calls a day asking to talk to the hiring manager.
   With that said why can't I get my current employees to work. Lets break down some of my employees.

Lisa- Lets start with one of my favorite employees. I can't get her to work an hour without wanting to eat something or take a smoke break. And I have employees That are fighting to get hours. As soon as the second hand hits her time to get off it is time to go, it doesn't matter if her work is done or not.

 Wonder Boy(Bubba Gump)- He laughs at pizza boxes and talks to himself about pink elephants. I don't really think I should go on.

 I think I'll give some others some honorable mentions on some later posts.

PooPoo Head

I'm really curious about one thing. Frankie answered the phone the other day. He had a very short conversation, but I heard my name before he put the line on hold. He comes over and tells me it is a manager from another store. She was all nice the conversation went something like this.
 Manager (all cheery)-Hey, Frankie How's it going? I helped train you at my store.
 Frankie - Um yeah....doing great. What do you want?
 Manager- So yeah Who's your manager right now?
 Frankie- Jeremy is.
 Manager- Ugh... he's a dick... never mind.

  So first off.... why is she being all happy to him. That store manager told The Boss Lady that Frankie wouldn't last a week. Second, why am I a dick? I don't even know this person. I mean... well... I might  not be the nicest person. But managers at other stores are now scared of the shovel? Anyhow Frankie seems to think its because I work, and I make people work. This is a very strange concept at other stores. Work? Ha! I'm not getting paid to work.

Wrong Store?

   So... I don't mind helping people. There is a line though. So come come on in.
Want a menu? -Sure
Want explanations on specials? -Sure
Want to take up 20 minutes of my server's time during a rush getting mad when they walk away? -ugh alright
Then want to use my phone to call another store to place an order? -Get Out
   And thanks for choosing House of a Thousand Pizzas, have a great rest of the day.

Dine-in Up

   When a pizza comes out the oven a person at the cut table has a little screen that tells them where it goes. Whether carryout- where they put it in our hot box. Or delivery, where they call out "delivery up" and hand it to either a driver or the person running the dispatch station.(The dispatch station- for those of you playing the home game- is where we take the drivers money ad decide where we send them with what orders.) Or If it is a dine-in pizza we get it ready and place it on the counter and call out "Dine-in up."  This lets the server know they need to come get a pizza. Well #2 shift manager calls out Dine-in up. Frankie is the server, he is on the phone with a customer.He turns and acknowledges her. #2 sees this and calls it out again, and again, and louder. And for the rest of the night she is just yelling at poor Frankie. Well I send Frankie on a 30 minute break. (Yes, this does sound familiar to Fight Night.) #2 takes over the dining room. As soon as a pizza comes up, Frankie popped out from under the counter or from behind a picture or something and started yelling in her ear, "Dine-In up" he yelled 3 or four times at her then obfuscated back into the wall leaving #2 pissed and confused. I thought it was beyond hilarious and had to step outside to keep people from seeing me undermine another shift manager by laughing at their misfortune. Good times.

Blood Thristy Beasts

   My employees are special individuals. And they have special needs. One need of theirs is to fins a button on someone and press it until not only the button breaks, but the housing of the button next door.
   We have a new labor eating piece of poo monster pizza, called the Big Pizza. This things takes three times as long to make takes up twice as much room in the oven, and is just a blast to bag. And yes i said bag, because this stupid pizza doesn't go into a box, we have to put this 2 foot 'thing' in a bag. Woo.
   Because of said largeness and difficulty of bagging said pizza, other stores have come up wth ways to handle said problems. One is to have two people run the cutting station. We here at a House of a Thousand Pizzas think this is a great idea, we just can't afford the labor of having two people stand there when we can barely support one. Normally a manager has to run that station just for lack of hours. Another more interesting method is for a cut table person to call out- "Bagger", and some poor smuck runs over and helps you bag it. Hrm...Yeah... about that... I can't even get my people to do their current work. and why not just say- "Hey Smuck, come here for a second and help me put this stupid thing in a bag." Now myself, The Boss Lady, and one or two others have devised a secret way of doing it. Now don't tell anyone because its a secret, we do it ourselves and just get faster. Wow... I can't believe I gave out our secret.
   Now, the other night we go pretty busy. They said we would do 2200 in sales, we did 4000. So a few of us had to bust our rumps. One of our charming shift managers decided to try the 'bagger' method because tha'ts what they do at a store she used to work at. Again, it doesn't work when everyone in the store is doing three jobs, and just because you yell louder and more times the word "bagger' does not mean my cook is going to stop making pizzas and come help you do something you should figure out how to do yourself. This frustrated her but bless her she kept trying. Until those blood thirsty beasts caught wind of her distress. They began returning her cries for help with bagger calls of their own. Soon half the store was calling out "bagger."     The moral of this story. Don't let these Blood Thirsty Beasts see fear or they will attack.

The Big Beat Down

Just to make one thing clear, we here at A House of a Thousand Pizzas do not have a corporate number to give out for complaints. Just so everyone got that, we here at A House of a Thousand Pizzas do not have a corporate number for complaints. Sometimes it feels like I'm dealing with my four-year old niece. When ever I tell her no, she goes and slashes my tires. Or... well at least she would if she could get to them. "No, you can't have a free pizza because we don't deliver to your address. What... you want corporates number not because i don't deliver to you, but because I said no... that's sad." So.... on with the story.
   I'm doing something semi-constructive. Hiding from customers on the make line more than likely, when I hear the boss lady yell for me.   Boss Lady hands me a receipt with a customers name phone number and address. (We have all this fun stuff and they still want to pick fights?) She tells me that this customer was threatening to come down to the store to beat her ass. I ask the wonderful question that I ask every time I show up and see Lisa still at work- "Why?" She tells me that because we don't deliver to him and we have before. She tells me to take care of it when he comes in. Fine. A little later a lady calls in wanting to know why we have ruse people answering the phones. I took a guess that it was his mom. I was right. She yelled and complained that who-ever said that this lady on the phone was worthless and all kinds of rude. So I asked her a question, because I was felling a tad froggy and was getting a little upset. " Did he also tell you that the reason she might have been getting rude was because He was threatening to come and beat her down? Is that how you raised your son." She wanted to speak to the lady, I told her that I was now handling the situation and am waiting for him to show up. Then she said since I was threatening them they were on the way.
   Intermission- We here at A House of a Thousand Pizzas do not condone threatening customers. I might threaten to hit an employee in the face with a shovel from time to time, but never customers.  
   And hour or so later she shows up guy tow. (Want to guess if they seemed well to do or not? It looked like a trailer park threw up in my dining room.) She wanted to talk to who was in charge. Boss Lady was busy, I am. She begins to ask for my name, my boss's name, her boss's name, and all sorts of crazyness. I pull out a sheet of paper. I write down my name, I  write down the Boss Lady's name, then I inform her that Boss Lady's Boss just stepped down, that When she calls tomorrow morning to speak with the Boss Lady She can get that info from her. Then she asked for a corporate number because she didn't want to wait. (Because a district manager would want to deal with this at 11pm on a Friday night) When I tell her that we don't have one she begins to tell me her work history at a Sonic. I worked at a place with a corporate number before, this is how it works. "Corporate people, I have a problem with store blearg."  "Really, that's a shame lemme get your info and I'll look into it.  Store blearg, this person has a complaint, call them and figure it out."
Anyways after her screaming at me for 30 minutes about this I told her to leave and she said fine that she would Google it and left giving me a charming hand gesture, which to this day I still don't care about.

Just a Quick Thought

So... Just a thought. Everyone with a job out there might want to take this advice.

Doing something that your boss tells you to do- This secures your job for tomorrow. Just a thought.

HIt and Hide

Here is a fun one from a few months ago.
   I get call from a customer stating that one of my drivers backed into her car and drove off. I got her info and told her I would call her once my driver got in, to go ahead and get her insurance together. Driver comes in, and I ask them about it. They don't seem to know anything about it. I asked if we could go check out their car to take a look for damage. Lets call the Driver James. James's car had no damage what so ever. I figured This caller was crazy and looking for something free. I bent down to brush some dirt off the bumper when a paint chip moved. That when I realized, whoops... those don't belong to his car. I brushed them off into a little zip-lock bag and placed them in my pocket.  I told James jokingly that each night he did a great job I would give him a chip. I'll be damned if he didn't almost get Employee of the Month because of it also.
  I like the idea of bribery to get people motivated, don't you?

Is This a Bad Time?

Here is one from just the other night.
   I came into work on a busy night. My boss was throwing items, screaming cursing and slamming things. My boss is a very calm and collected person. I've never seen her do this. I asked her, "Boss, is everything alright?" She responded, "What do you think?!?!?" followed by a slam and a throw of a pan and then storming off. Everybody is entitled to a rough night. That's not the good bits. As soon as she leaves one of my best cooks comes up to me. (We held his position while he was on a 100 day "vacation".) He asks, "Do you think this is a bad time to put in my 2 week notice?"

   What do you guys think?

I Do That All The Time

Last week four of my cooks came in. Why 4 cooks came in on this weeknight when on the weekends I only get 1 or 2, I'm not real sure. I tell each of them what to do before I go home. I think everything is just grand. One of my... "favorite" cooks (Lisa) tells my most experienced ones, "I have to cook everyday. I'm not going to tonight." This comment sparks a great commedic event. For the rest of the night, any person in the store that is asked to do something makes that comment. "Hey Jimmy, can you sweep that mess up?" "Nope sorry boss, I have to sweep every night. I'm not going to."
"Nope I can't deliver that pizza. I deliver every night."
"Nope I can't go help that customer, I have to do it every night."
They were not exactly shy about doing this infront of her. I think they waited for her to come around before doing it. What really confuses me is that I just wanted her to cut pizzas for the night. She shouldn't be cooking anyways. Lisa just wanted to look important.
What am I paying these guys for anyways?

Just a Little Peeved

Just a quick one. Jimmy (Again, not a real name) comes up to me one day and pulls a glass pipe out of his pocket. "Dude, I'm sorry I'm brought this to work." Before I can reply. "I've only had it for two days and look how black it is."
   My first reaction is to hit him in the face with a shovel. I move past this to my second, more HR correct response. "Jimmy, put that away, you can loose your job for that" He replies, "Its Friday night, you don't have anymore cooks. You can't fire me."
   This is why I have 6 interviews set up this week for new cooks.

Fight Night

After being fed up with my current selection of servers, I hired a 16 year old kid, Frankie. In his interview he had great speaking skills. He was dressed nice. He had all his teeth and wasn't on drugs. Great, lets hire him. I found out later that he trains MMA. (That's mixed martial arts for the kids playing the home game.) So I kinda like this kid. He comes in and works hard and goes home, no baby-momma drama.
   Bubba Gump one day decides Frankie is not doing things right and starts messing with his tables. Bubba Gump was doing everything he could to piss Frankie off. Finally I get involved and send Bubba Gump home. Not thinking about it, I shortly after send Frankie on break. A few moments later I am looking out my front door the two are talking. I see Frankie's leg go back, and his hands turn to fists, and I notice that he is assuming the position. Bubba Gump is about to be a splat on the parking lot. I turn to one of my employees and tell him to go call Frankie's phone and tell him to come in. As he walks off I turn to a second employee and state the following, " I just covered my back in there by telling him to call him and tell him to come in, correct." The employee nods. "I'll bet you a nickle when he answers he tells him to punch him in the face." We both get a laugh. we notice Frankie grabs his phone looks at it then looks at us in confusion. When he comes in after hanging up, I ask him when was said to him. "Hit him in the face and knock him out!"
   Don't you just love my employees?

Just a Description

One of my employees gets a post all to himself just as a kind of back story. Bubba Gump sounds like a great name for him. He is a special person. I have no problems with mentally challenged people. None. This person though... I'm not sure what he is. He holds conversations with pizza boxes. He'll randomly start laughing to himself, loudly. I tried talking to him one day. I though he was talking back to me, until he walked away. I realized he was speaking to himself. I call him Wonder Boy. I wonder how he got the job. I wonder how he has kept the job. And I wonder how he gets up and dresses himself every morning.

A Great Customer Complaint

I understand that sometimes we mess up. If someone in my store messes up a pizza, I will go out of my way to make sure the problem is fixed. I've sent drivers to the far reaches of delivery zones with just a few packets of peppers.

   Now sometimes... people can get down right silly. The other night a gentleman called me. I  just happened to answer the phone. After going through our opening gibberish, he asks... "Where is my pizza." Now its a busy night. We quote around 30 to 35 min for delivery at slower times. I asked him his name so I could help him out. His response, "First tell me where my pizza is." At this point I know this will be fun. I end up getting his name. I notice it has been on the road for about 20 minutes. Alright that's just great. I let him know his pizza should be there any minute the driver left 20 min ago, they should be at your doorstep. His answer, "Well its late, I have hungry children I need to put in the bath and get ready for bed. What are you going to do to make me happy." Ok.... My first thought is why are your hungry children not bathed and fed at 10pm at night.... I didn't comment. I told him it should be there any minute I'll call the driver to see where she is. "I've already spoken with your driver, she can't find my house." To sum things up. when I refuse to give him a free pizza he wants my boss's name and number so that he can have me fired along with everyone else in the store. He uses very choice words. As soon as I hang up my driver calls. She says every time she talks to him he yells those choice words with her and hangs up.
   Now this is where things get funny. The next day i come in and mention it to my boss. She says he never called, go figure. A driver near by has a great idea. I will give it to you now.
   "Call up the customer. Ask them why they didn't call in in. Let them know that I didn't come to work because I didn't think i had a job, and now i have to deal with being late and playing catch up all day. Thanks a bunch."
   Just the thought of the look of anger on that inbred, stained wife-beater wearin redneck's face contorted in anger and confusion almost made me do it.

The Start of Everything

I work at a pizza delivery establishment. I deal with customer complaints and employee issues on a daily basis. I came to the conclusion one day that the things I hear need to be shared with the world. All names have been changed to prevent the hurting of feelings. Everything I post here actually happened. I will start off with some old things to get things moving. I hope you guys enjoy!